Friday, August 15, 2008

Remember the cute little girl in a red dress singing in the Olympics Beijing 2008 opening ceremony? Yep, the one who charmed the world with her pretty face and angelic voice. Guess what? Pretty face - hers. Angelic voice - not hers! Yeah, some of you most probably have heard or read about this already. This issue is all over the internet now.

Apparently the organisers wanted a girl with a "good image" and a "good voice". You'd think that is easy feat in China's vast population. But no, they had to resolve to having the cuter girl lip-sync to the better singer's voice. The organisers are defending themselves by saying it is of national interest to portray a perfect aesthetic image to the world. But doing it at the expense of jeopardising a girl's public image and another girl's self-esteem? The only image portrayed here are those of deception and cruelty! Oh, and by the way, the supposedly no-cute-enough girl is adorable! (I have decided not to post pictures of those two poor girls here. There is already enough exposure of them elsewhere in the internet.)

First, I thought that hey, at least they used the girl's voice and let the other girl lip-sync, instead of downright shunning them from taking any part in the ceremony just because they are not perfect in both aspects. They would be like partners, each enjoying 50% of the cake. All seems fair, except that they never once given any credits to the girl behind that voice! The cuter girl took all the credits and was shot to soaring fame overnight. Now the whole world also knows she is a poser, and she probably doesn't have a clue about what is going on. Great job, organisers. Well done.

That's not all. Remember the giant footsteps made of fireworks at the very beginning of the ceremony? Yep, that was fake too. The organisers have admitted that the footage (pun unintended) was produced with lots of CGI effects way before the big night, and was distributed to broadcasters for "convenience and theatrical effects". The organisers also said that it was a safety precautionary measure as attempting to capture the footage live could be dangerous and the quality of the footage may not be clear. That's fine and all, except that they have deceived everyone into thinking that it was real! The whole idea of 29 footsteps towards the Bird's Nest is actually very creative and symbolic. If they could just come clean right from the beginning, telling everyone that the footage was not live and has been enhanced with GGI effects, it would still have been awesome.

I actually noticed something funny during one of their performance, where thousands of performers were wearing fluorescent costumes with light bulbs wired all over their bodies. One of the performers could not get his light bulbs lit. So he was the only dim guy amidst the crowd of bright running men. I find that really hilarious. But now that I realise to what extent of perfection the organisers wanted the event to be, it must have been horrific for that guy with faulty light bulbs and the organisers.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opening ceremony. It was very grand, and I was very impressed by the amount of effort they put in. I just hope that nothing else I saw that night was fake. London 2012, please keep it real!